Luigi Meneghello

Infobox Writer
name = Luigi Meneghello


image_size =
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pseudonym =
birthdate = death date|1922|02|16
birthplace = Malo (Italy)
deathdate = death date|2007|06|26
deathplace = Thiene (Italy)
occupation = novelist, essayist, academic
nationality = Italian
period = 1963—2004
genre =
subject = recent Italian history, the Italian Resistance, teaching
movement =
influences =
influenced =


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Luigi Meneghello (February 16 1922 - June 26 2007) was an Italian contemporary writer and scholar.

Biography

Luigi Meneghello was born in Malo, a small town in the countryside near Vicenza, on February 16 1922. His father was a craftsman and his mother was a teacher. Meneghello entered in 1938 the University of Padua to study philosophy. From 1940 to 1942 worked for Paduan newspaper "Il Veneto". In the early Forties, he had his first contacts with anti-fascism and, after a short time in the Army, entered the Partito d'azione and became active in the resistance movement in 1943. Of his early life, he said:

In 1945 Meneghello graduated with a thesis about the philosophy of Benedetto Croce. In 1947 he moved to the University of Reading (England) with a one-year British Council scholarship and afterward he began teaching aspects of the Italian Renaissance in the English Department. In 1948 he married Katia Bleier, a survivor of Auschwitz. In 1955 a separate Italian section was formed followed by the founding of a Department of Italian Studies in 1961, headed by himself. He was offered, and accepted, a chair as Professor in Italian Literature. After an intense academic activity and as translator (often with the pseudonym Ugo Varnai), in 1963 he published his first book, part novel part autobiography, "Libera nos a Malo", about the narrow-minded but vital milieu of his home town, Malo. The title is a pun on the Latin words for "deliver us from evil" and the name of the town. One year later he published "I piccoli maestri" (in English, "The Outlaws"; literally, "The little masters"), "one of the few non-rhetorical, and therefore all the more effective, memoirs of the Italian resistance, which is true in every detail" (L. and G. Lepschy, in the "Guardian obituary"). A film version with the same title was directed in 1998 by Daniele Luchetti.

In 1980 Meneghello retired from the University of Reading, to devote his time to writing. He lived in London and later in Thiene (near Vicenza), where he moved permanently after his wife's death in 2004. He died there in June 2007.

Bibliography

*"Libera nos a Malo" (1963)
*"I piccoli maestri" (1964, translated into English in 1967 as "The Outlaws" by Raleigh Trevelyan [ [http://www.societyofauthors.net/soa/page_id_sub.php4?pid=27&parentid=7&par_nm=Prizes,%20grants%20and%20awards Past winners of the John Florio Prize] at the Society of Authors website] )
*"Pomo Pero" (1974)
*"Fiori italiani" (1976)
*"L’acqua di Malo" (1986)
*"Il Tremaio. Note sull’interazione tra lingua e dialetto nelle scritture letterarie" (1986)
*"Jura" (1987)
*"Bau-Sète!" (1988)
*"Leda e la schioppa" (1989)
*"Rivarotta" (1989)
*"Che fate quel giovane?" (1990)
*"Maredè, Maredè" (1991)
*"Il dispatrio" (1993)
*"Promemoria" (1994)
*"Il Turbo e il Chiaro" (1996)
*"La materia di Reading" (1997)
*"Le Carte. Volume I: Anni sessanta" (1999)
*"Le Carte. Volume II: Anni settanta" (2000)
*"Le Carte. Volume III: Anni ottanta" (2001)
*"Trapianti. Dall'inglese al vicentino" (2002)
*"Quaggiù nella biosfera. Tre saggi sul lievito poetico delle scritture" (2004)
*"La materia di Reading e altri reperti" (2005)

References

*
*Foreword from cite book
last =Meneghello
first =Luigi
title =Fiori italiani--con un mazzo di nuovi Fiori
editor =Tullio De Mauro | publisher =Rizzoli
year =2006
location =Milan
id =ISBN 88-17-01252-1 it icon
*Obituary, "The Guardian", 17 August 2007 (see External links)

External links

* [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article2176107.ece Obituary] , "The Times", 1 August 2007
* [http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2150490,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=10 Obituary] , "The Guardian", 17 August 2007 (originary, [http://www.reading.ac.uk/italian/meneghello2.htm slightly different version] at the University of Reading website)
* [http://www.comune.malo.vi.it/ant_a_9_IT_22893_1.html Villa Clementi: istituzione culturale del Comune di Malo] , webpage about Meneghello by Malo town council it icon
* [http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Luigi_Meneghello Luigi Meneghello - an introduction] , article at Citizendium